


Can't Do This Anywhere

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [227]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Bossy!Peggy, Dirty Talk, Everybody Doesn't Get What They Want, F/M, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-World War II, Reunions, Separations, Virgin Steve Rogers, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-22 19:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17668475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It's not every day you get reunited with the love of your life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Rewatching _Brokeback Mountain_ for the 78th time. There's this scene in a motel that I've always liked.

The motel’s set off from the highway, not so far as to be hard for some weary traveller to find but enough so that the sound of cars isn’t constant, especially this late at night. It’s late and yet it feels early, the kind of giddiness that kicks in when you’re a kid and make it past the witching hour, when you can watch the clock tick its way into a new goddamn day.

Four years. Four years since the war ended, since they came back home beribboned and so glad not to be dead. Four years since he’d heard Steve’s voice for real and not just as an echo, a memory inside his own head. Four years since that last night in New York when they’d talked their way into a little room at a flophouse by flashing their medals and then stripped off each other’s clothes, hands moving faster than the ones on Bucky’s watch, and god, when they’d been skin to skin, stretched precarious in that skinny little bed, Bucky’d thought this was the closest he’d ever get to heaven, feeling Steve’s fingers inside him, feeling Steve’s smile shoved against his own.

“You gonna give it up that easy?” Steve had whispered, his words dripping over Bucky’s chin. “Ten minutes and two fingers and your own hand on your dick? Is that all it takes for you, Buck?”

He hadn’t answered, hadn’t been able to; his smart mouth was burned down to ash. Didn’t matter. Words weren’t really necessary. The sudden clench of his body, Steve’s low groan, a splatter of heat and of light. Those were more than enough.

Hadn’t stopped Steve from gloating, of course, in his blue-eyed All American way. He’d bitten Bucky’s neck and smirked his way into a sheepskin and then, oh then, who’d been the one so fucking eager to give it up?

“I hate you,” Steve’d grumbled as Bucky laughed, as he tumbled in a heap at Bucky’s side, condom still wrapped around his dick.

“Naw,” Bucky’d said, sitting up to do Steve’s dirty work, grinning when the stretch of his fingers over Steve spent still made the man moan. “You love me, Rogers.”

“I do.” Steve’s head had fallen back, his chest still quick rising and falling. “You know damn well that I do.”

They’d done a good job that night and all that next day of forgetting what the next night would bring, what the end of the war had made inevitable: a train at Grand Central with Steve’s name on it, one that would run him back out to the wheat fields of Iowa, to his family’s farm, to the only place he’d ever known as a home.

“Wait,” Bucky’d said when Steve’s hand was on the door. They were both in uniform again, both spit combed and shoe polished. He’d promised to go to the station with Steve and watch him ride away and he would, damn it, he would. But first--

“I can’t do this on the platform,” he’d hummed, his hips snug against Steve’s, Steve’s back slammed flat to the door. “Can’t do this anywhere, frankly. So hold still and let me kiss you goodbye, Captain. Right here.”

Steve’s hands found his hair and his own clawed at khaki and they laid their lips together, careful, as gentle as they had that first time, in France, pressed against some damn darkened oak. Bucky wasn’t afraid this time, though; of an ambush, of discovery, of a flurry of machine gun fire from somewhere in the great stretch of beyond. This time, the last time, he felt joy, sweet and dampened, one last great flash of Steve Rogers sparking deep inside of his heart.

“I love you,” he’d said, his cheek tucked against Steve’s. “I love you and so help me, if you don’t write, I’ll walk to fucking Iowa and shove a pencil in your hand.”

Steve had hummed, a soft little sound like the ones he made at night when Bucky was bundled behind him, holding him firm and close. “Baby,” he’d murmured, his big palms cupping Bucky’s neck. “I have this funny feeling that if I don’t write you, even if I can’t say everything that’s true, I’ll curl up and die. Wither away like corn nobody bothers to harvest and lets die right there on the stalk.”

“Don’t talk about that.” His own voice fierce, a knife slicing through silk. “That’s bad luck.”

“We’re not at war anymore, Buck. There’s no Nazi waiting outside to ice me, I promise. Or you.”

Bucky had kissed him again because it was easier than talking, easier than letting any of his fears find their way out: that they’d never see each other again. That this was really the end. That he’d forget what Steve’s mouth felt like on his.

“Write me, you bastard,” he’d said at the station, as whole happy mass of humanity around them threatened to sweep Steve away. “Don’t you fucking forget.”

Steve had grinned at him, wide and bright, the kind of smile that almost hid those fat tears. “I won’t. I couldn’t, Sergeant. You take care of yourself, now, you hear?”

And then he’d turned his back, he’d had to, and he’d faded away, another Army boy ready to find his way home.

Four years ago, that’d been. Four. It's hard for Bucky to comprehend. It feels like a hell of a lot more.

There’d been postcards at first, one-cent ones that Steve picked up along the way. He got one from nowhere, Pennsylvania, one from Pittsburgh, one from Cleveland, Ohio, US of A. Sometimes there were words, affection couched in bland everyday talk: _Saw this Talked to this pretty WAC from Seattle Ate an entire steak on the house you’d have loved it, Buck._ But more often there were sketches, pencil-doodled pictures of people sitting next to him, of a big tree by the tracks, of the curve of a lady’s bosom and below it, scrawled: _From memory, of course. That night in Montmartre; remember that?_

He’d blushed right there by the mailboxes, the key dangling slack from his hand. Of course he remembered. Steve fucking knew that. They wouldn’t be where they were if that night had never happened, if they’d never gotten sloshed on the wine those Resistance fellas had shoved at them, gleeful over the success of the day’s raid. Because one of those fellas, the leader, hadn’t been a fella at all. Her name was Margaret and she had the kind of hair Bucky’d always gone for in high school: thick chestnut waves your hands could get lost in, that you could hide your face in, that you could sweep from a girl’s face while you were kissing and get back the prettiest shudder, the sweetest tremble of a moan.

Except Margaret wasn’t sixteen and they were in the middle of war and the social niceties, already stripped down by sheer terror, got a lot thinner when there was wine, when he was more lit up than he’d been in months.

“Ma’am,” he’d said, bold as brass in that dank little cellar, the one safe place in all of Paris, “forgive me for being so fucking forward, but I’d sure as hell like to kiss you.”

“Jesus, Bucky,” Steve had grimaced, turning the color of ketchup as the rest of the room keeled back and laughed. “Didn’t your mama teach you any manners?”

“Hell yes she did, Rogers, thank you.” He flashed Margaret a smile. “But she also taught me to ask nicely for what I want. Didn’t I ask you nicely, ma’am?”

“You did.” Margaret leaned forward over the tiny table, her face fully catching the oil lamp’s light. Her hair was loose and her cheeks were like roses, all English meadows in summer. “If I may say so, Sergeant, you’re remarkably couth for an American. The last ones we had in here couldn’t have spelled _please_ if you’d spotted them the Es, A, and P.” She stood up all at once with a smooth, easy grace that belied the damp on the walls, the smell of gunpowder and red wine that took up all the room in the air. “I should warn you, though, that it’s been ages since I’ve been kissed properly. Do you think yourself capable of remedying that?”

He’d felt Steve go still beside him, a statue, felt his stomach do an eager flip-flop. “Yeah, I do. Though not with an audience.”

Margaret laughed and it’d startled him, all of them; in the two weeks since he and Steve had made this connection, since they’d snuck into the city and hooked up with Margaret and her clandestine chaps, the woman had rarely smiled. She hadn’t had a lot of reason to, much less to toss her head back and laugh. It was damn near intoxicating.

“Gentlemen,” she’d said to the room, one sweep of her elegant hand. “Make yourself scarce, _s’il vous plait_.”

There was a clatter, a burst of general commotion, one that got its hooks into Steve.

“I’ll,” he’d said, his limbs suddenly a fumble, “later, I’ll meet you, Buck. ‘K?”

Then Margaret was standing in front of them, a beautiful bulwark between them and the light.

“Captain Rogers,” she said, brook no quarter, “if you’d be so kind. I’d much prefer if you stayed.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was the politeness that got him, Bucky figured; the  _ so kind _ and  _ much prefer _ . Why else would the shy kid from Iowa who Buck had never seen so much as wink at a woman have settled back beside him so fast? Hell, he’d sunk into back into his seat like a man half-bewitched and maybe that’s exactly what he’d been. What they both were.

Margaret chucked them both under the chin, her lips twitching. “There now,” she said. “That’s better, I think."

Then she was moving, her hands on the stretch of her sensible skirt, hiking, the tapes of her stockings flashing white, and then she was straddling Bucky’s lap and his head was back against the wall and he was holding her hips and staring up past her tits and goggling into that lovely, knowing face.

“Come on, Sergeant. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten the point of this exercise. I thought you were going to astound me with your prowess. A kiss for the ages, or something. Isn't that what you said?”

Her blouse was cream and somehow unwrinkled, silk against the scratch of his undershirt. It was warm outside, had been all day, and even the chill of their hideaway hadn’t washed it away totally, the smell of her sharp, clean sweat. It’d been a long time since he’d held a woman like this, the heat of her body, of her skin, only just masked to him. It was killing him not to tug things away and lose himself in her touch.

She rocked in his lap, her hands planted firm on his shoulders. “Do I have to order you?” Her voice was softer now but all the more steel. “And here I thought you were so eager. Is that your problem, Mr. Barnes? Are you all bark and no bite?”

He gave up a groan and beside him, Steve echoed it, and good Christ, he’d forgotten Steve was still there. But Margaret hadn’t.

“Ah, Captain,” she said. “There you are. Perhaps I might ask for your assistance?”

Then she was leaning, reaching, and all Bucky could do was hold onto her, startled, and watch her head sink and Steve’s rise until their mouths found each other, until her fingers were curled around his face and his were turned around her wrist and Steve was sighing, these soft hot little sounds that made Bucky’s face burn. They were so gorgeous together, her dark hair tumbling over his strong, handsome face, and somehow Bucky could sense that Margaret was being careful with Steve, gentle, not giving him too fast or too much. For all his broad shoulders and blue flyaway eyes, he’d never known Steve to set a store by the fairer sex; hell, by anybody. They’d been paired up for more than a year, he and Rogers, a handful of months training with the OSS in England and the rest over here, sneaking through Hitler’s Europe, and in all that time Steve had never so much as said boo about Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, or any pretty dame they’d passed on the street. Bucky had chalked it up to good manners, to professionalism, to Steve’s always ever determination to do their job right, but now, watching Margaret lead Steve through their kiss, he wondered if the captain had ever had a woman at all.

The thought made him feel itchy inside, hot and scratchy, and got his cock’s attention but good.

“Hey,” he said roughly, clawing at Margaret’s hips, the soft curve of her ass. “It’s my turn.”

She lifted her head and Steve moaned, as if her mouth had been the only thing keeping it in. Her face was self-satisfied and all heat. “Oh,” she said, “have we jogged your memory, then?”

Her eyes alone he could've handled. Brown and molten, the kind of chocolate that burns your fingers and scorches the tip of your tongue. But then Steve was looking at him, too, a fever in his blue skies that Bucky had damn well never seen. Before them both, he felt shivering, anxious and aroused to the point of no fucking relief.

“Ma'am,” he'd said, tugging, shooting a hand in her hair and yanking her back into balance. "Jesus. C’mere.”

She was grinning when he kissed her, smirking like the damn Cheshire Cat, preening. She kept at it even when his tongue kicked back her lips, when he licked over her tongue and tugged at her hair none to gentle and, oh, yeah. She liked that.

She hummed into the kiss, arched, reared up above him and came at him right back, her knees digging into the faded wooden bench, her back this long, perfect curve, and the more noise he made, the more she seemed to like it, the more she gave him, the hotter she got. 

“Oh,” Steve whispered beside him. Bucky could feel him shaking, their shoulders pressed into one another, tight. “Oh, fuck, Bucky. Oh, god.”

Margaret moaned, a low, hungry sound that Bucky tried like hell to chase, and she reached for his wrists, brought his hands up to cup the weight of her breasts. He squeezed and her kiss stammered and it was all he could do to find the buttons of her blouse rather than to just tug the fucking thing off and when she was free, when he could slip the silk from her shoulders and pop open the catch, her tits were some of the prettiest he’d ever seen.

“You say that to all the girls, I’ll bet.”

He leaned down and nuzzled the top of each one, kissed the fat blooms of her nipples. “Definitely not, ma’am.”

“Ah," she said, breathless, her head, her hair falling back. “So I’m an exception, is that it?”

He smiled, let her feel it. “In each and every goddamn way.”

“Can I?” Steve shifted beside them .His voice was frayed, his vowels a mile wide. “Can I touch you, Margaret?”

She bit her lip. Bucky felt her body tremble. “Wherever you like, darling.”


	3. Chapter 3

He turned his eyes up and watched Steve lift his hand, watched him glide just the tips of his fingers up Margaret’s bicep, watched them crest on the bone curve of her shoulder.

“Oh,” Margaret whispered, her fingers winding into Bucky’s hair even as her eyes fixed on Steve’s pretty, flushed face. “Oh.”

Bucky listened to the lady and buried his mouth between her tits, kissed them, licked at her nipples and clutched greedily at her back. God help them, she was still in her damn skirt and sensible heels and she was hot between her legs, shameless, rubbing against the swell of his dick and filling the air with low, hungry sounds.

“Like that?” Steve’s voice was hoarse. “Is that all right?”

Margaret moaned. Her nails dug into the back of Bucky’s neck. “Yes,” she said. “ _Yes_. But you needn’t be so gentle. I assure you, I won’t break.”

Steve’s fingers trailed down her spine and tumbled over Bucky’s own. Lingered there, gently tangled, his thumb turning circles over Bucky’s wrist. “Bucky,” he said. There was a sweet tinge of the desperate. “I don’t know what to do.”

Bucky lifted his head, or tried to; Margaret’s grip didn’t let him go far. “Ask the lady if you can unzip her skirt.”

The captain’s face was heartbreakingly earnest. “Margaret, may I--?”

She turned to him, her mouth parted. “Fuck yes. Help me take it off.”

In a moment, Steve was standing behind her and together, he and Bucky eased Margaret to her feet. Her nipples were tight pink buds, dampened, and there was a flush that stretched from her throat to the base of her breasts, one that only deepened when Steve slid an arm around her waist to steady her, when Bucky reached out and found her hips with his hands.

“Now,” he said. “Grab the tab of the zipper there, Steve. You see it?”

“Yeah.”

“Get a hold of it and just ease it down.” He heard the catch of metal teeth and saw Margaret’s fingers dig into Steve’s arm, felt the starch stretch of her skirt soften against the heat of his palm. “Good. That’s real good, Steve. Make sure you unzip it the whole way.”

The look on Margaret’s face was electric, like she was a thunderhead doing its best to swallow lightning.

“Ok,” Steve said. “I got it.”

They let go at almost the same moment and Margaret’s skirt fell, slid down her hips and over her garters and formed a khaki pool at her feet and the hot sweet of her, the soft bitter, the smell her skirt had only just masked, swam over Bucky’s face, made his cock jerk hard in his pants.

“Oh, shit,” he said, senseless, powerless. “Oh, shit, ma’am. You’re so wet.”

Her underwear was faded, something once the full color of cream now reduced to a dull, milky sheen. When he stroked them, ran his fingers over the edges, he could feel the whispers of what had started out lace; that’s what her skin felt like now, the soft stretch of her stomach, the low rise of her thighs. Lace.

“Sergeant.”

He glanced up and they were both staring at him, twin expressions of open desire and aching want. Steve’s eyes, though, were stunned, almost glassy, while Margaret’s had found some of the sharpness, the ever-present edge that he saw in her every day.

She leaned back against Steve’s chest and rubbed her knuckles down Bucky’s cheek. “Is there something you’d like?”

He got bold, leaned forward to breathe over her mound. “If you’re so inclined,” he said, “I’d love to eat you out.”

Steve made a low, wounded sound. Bucky wondered if he was hard, if he was rubbing his cock against the swell of Margaret’s plush ass. He wondered what it looked like, Steve’s cock, when he had it all the way up. He wondered what it would look like sinking into Margaret’s wet cunt.

Margaret stroked his hair, each touch of her hand winding him up harder, tight. “Are you good at it?”

“Good at--?”

Two fingers under his chin. No place to look but up and up. “Can you make me come on your tongue? That’s a simple enough question, surely.”

He’d never heard a woman talk like that before, like she knew what she wanted. The girls he’d slept with back home, they acted like they were ashamed of it, how good sex made them feel, how hard Bucky could make them come. Even his last girlfriend, an older woman he worked with, had gotten squirmy when he’d asked her what she wanted, when he’d guessed and guessed right, when she’d screamed and clutched around his fingers, then done the same on his dick. She’d been embarrassed, after, had turned her face into his shoulder and apologized for having been so eager, so loud. _I don’t want you to think that I’m easy_ , she’d said.

But Margaret, she didn’t give a flying fuck. She was just as bossy in bed as she was on the job and lord, what a glorious fucking change.

Bucky swallowed. “Damn right I can, ma’am.”

She tipped her head back on Steve’s shoulder and peered up at him. Smiled. “And you, Captain. Whatever shall we do with you?”

Steve’s voice was all breath. “Tell me.”

Margaret kissed his jaw, nuzzled it. “The way you were touching me earlier? Those soft little strokes?”

“Yes.”

“Do that again. On my breasts. And don’t take your eyes off of Bucky, alright? I want you to watch what he's doing."

“Yes,” Steve whispered, his gaze colliding with Bucky’s; both startled, both undeniably hot. “I mean, no. I promise, I won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks up _self-indulgent_ in dictionary*  
> *finds a picture of this fic*


	4. Chapter 4

It took a moment to free her, first to snap open the tapes holding her stockings--tan, sturdy things that spoke of no nonsense utility, not the featherweight silk they should’ve been, that Bucky could imagine her in, her fierceness undimmed--then to reach up and peel down and leave the hottest part of her, the most private, beautifully and wholly exposed. Her hair was dark there, another set of rich brown curls, and when they moved her, when she kicked free of her skirt and her underthings, when she slid to stand astride Bucky’s knees, Steve still a trembling bulwark behind her, he shot forward and pressed a moan between her soft, damp folds.

“Your tongue,” Margaret said, strangled, rocking her hips into his face. “Give me your tongue, Sergeant. Fuck, I need it.”

Part of him wanted to tease her, to draw the whole business out. To watch Steve try and hold her while she writhed, while she cursed and spat until he gave her two fingers and lapped at her clit. But part of him, the loudest part now, the strongest, was horny and ten seconds from whipping it out and he thought he’d better be nice to her now so she’d come for them and then sit sated and slick on his cock.

A nudge of his nose, a brush of his fingers, and he found the spot that made Margaret cry out, made her scratch at his shoulder, made her say:

"Steve, darling, look. Look. Watch your pretty friend lick my pussy."

He wanted Steve to watch him fuck her. Wanted him to see what it meant to make love to a dame. Never mind that Margaret was ruining this 22-year old kid with a captain’s pips, this impossible virgin, for any woman who might come behind. And never mind that when he got a good grip on Margaret’s thighs his fingers could just catch the edge of Steve’s trousers, neat but battered khaki, and that for some damnable reason, the thought of Steve’s skin beyond it sent claws of heat down his back, added to the sweat-drenched of his shirt. Why, he had no earthly idea.

He’d seen Steve naked before, a hundred times; the peril of living out of the same rucksack for months, of waiting out the days in the trees silent as Hitler’s legions marched by. He could picture, then, those thick, muscled legs, the hair so pale there it was more white than blond. He could imagine, too, the jut of Steve’s cock, flaccid, the way it hung it perfect proportion to his body, broad and long in its sheath.

He’d seen it hard, too, once or twice, in the mornings, when Steve got up before him and stumbled for the fire with his body still lit up from his dreams.

He wondered if this was the kind of thing Steve dreamed about, the weight of a willing and beautiful woman wound eagerly in his arms.

Or was it a man he saw there, that he imagined holding on to? A man he wanted to kiss and to hold.

Margaret was panting now, the tower of her lovely body leaning back, and even over the roar of his heart, Bucky could hear them kissing, the soft, slow wet suck of their mouths. It made sense to mimic them, to lay his lips over hers, like Steve was; to slip his tongue deep between them and lap at her sweet, bitter wet. He rubbed at her clit with his thumb and felt her tighten around him, the mouth of her cunt closing around the tip of his tongue.

His face was wet, from his nose to chin to his teeth, and she was bucking between them, shoving herself at his face and rocking back against Steve’s hips, the solid stone of his body, what must be the granite line of his cock, and for a moment, he imagined that Steve was inside her, giving it to her just right from behind, and his face was still here, pressed between her legs, sucking her clit and stroking her lips and feeling Steve there, solid, rubbing his fingers over the heat of Steve’s cock as it moved in and out, in and out, Margaret’s beautiful cunt closing, soaking. _Oh god_ , he thought, his mind at the edge of word, of any semblance of reason.

_Oh, god. Oh, god. Fuck._

He slid his fingers where his tongue had been and gave her something to ride, something to shove down on, something to shadow the length and width of his cock. Steve’s. Both of them, maybe, in rapid succession; Margaret bent over the table and his hands on Steve’s hips, on the taut curves of his ass, guiding him inside her, showing him how to push his dick through Bucky’s spunk and deep into her pink, needy cunt.

He grunted, the image making him greedy--Steve’s ass flexing, Margaret’s knuckles white where they gripped the table, the sheen of Steve’s cock as he pulled out and shoved in--and Margaret grabbed at his hair, pulled it, and held him tight against her pussy, barely enough room for his mouth to fucking move.

“Shit,” she said, crystal clear. A bell on a cold winter’s night. “Shit, just like that. Yes. Oh, you sweet boy. Sweetheart. Keep licking me like that and I’ll come.”

Bucky scrabbled at her thighs and wormed his hand up, over; curled his palm around the firm peaches of her ass and squeezed and now he could feel how hard Steve was rutting, could feel the fingers of heat from his crotch as he pressed them eagerly against Margaret’s ass, against the khaki barrier of his pants.

“Oh.” Margaret’s voice stuttered. There was a fresh slide of wet on his chin. “Oh, _god_ , yes. Yes.”

Inside, she was a vise; outside, she was a live wire, snapping and crackling with every thrust of his fingers, with every suck of his tongue. And Steve, he was groaning, a sound like he was dying. Like he’d been shot and was down to his very last breath.

And that’s when it’d happened, the thing that had smashed the whole path of Bucky’s life. The thing that’d upended it, kicked it over like a trashcan. The thing that’d pivoted his whole sense of who he was and who he could love:

Steve’s fingers in his hair, where Margaret’s had been. Steve’s knuckles sliding gentle over the hot damp of his forehead, his face.

He’d looked up, instinctive, and seen Margaret’s head tumbled back. Her eyes closed, her mouth open, her tits bouncing with each jerk of Steve’s hips. And he’d seen Steve smiling at him, felt that broad thumb slide down his cheek and come to rest at the edge of his mouth, rub easy at the stretch there, the heat.

“Go on, Buck,” Steve had said, his cheeks pink, his eyes gorgeous and glazed. “Give the lady what she asked for. Make her come.”


	5. Chapter 5

It was like a circuit completing, having Steve touch him, a light going on in a locked room whose door he’d never noticed before, a space inside him that cracked open now as he lapped at Margaret’s fat clit, frantic, the fevered clutch of her cunt closing, drowning, surrounding him with the slip of velvet, of light, and of heat.

“ _Steve_.” Margaret’s voice, plaintive. A tattered ribbon that curled around Bucky’s wrist. “Steve, oh god. Oh, god, darling, _god_ \--”

He closed his mouth around her, his lips turned in the shape of Steve’s name, and imagined his own voice turned around those same words, imagined himself in Steve’s arms, pinned, his body stretched like Margaret’s was, wet. Steve’s fingers in him, pumping, filling him up from behind, the other arm turned across his chest the same way he was petting Margaret’s breast, those big fingers plucking gently at his nipple as he whined like Margaret was, as he arched his hips and rocked back and cried.

“I bet you’re beautiful with a cock inside you,” Steve murmured in the damp dust of that dark little room. “To be filled up and full, that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

They moaned in time, almost at the same instant, he and Margaret. Margaret and he.

“Can I tell you how many times I’ve thought about it? How much I’d like to spread your legs and open you up with my tongue? How many times I’ve gotten hard imagining what you must taste like?”

Margaret’s breath drew in sharp and her thighs stiffened, her softness starting to shudder.

“How, oh, god”--Steve’s words reeled, a hot slurry--”how wet my cock gets when I think about your mouth on it, Bucky, when I think about seeing my spunk all over your face.”

Bucky couldn’t think, he couldn’t see or breathe or touch himself, fish out the long, needy line of his cock, and even as Margaret shouted Steve’s name and came with a long, gorgeous sound, her pussy rippling and tightening and sighing, he saw what Steve did, what Steve wanted: Steve the one standing bare in front of him, Bucky’s hands on his body, shoving Steve out just in time so he could catch Steve’s seed on his chin, his cheek, the bruised well of his mouth.

He’d never wanted another man before, not that he could remember. Never been so goddamn ready to touch. There was a time it might have bothered him, confused the hell of him, even, the weird storm of what he was feeling, but this was war and war was shit but it had a strange way, he'd learned, of sharpening the world down to its barest essentials, of peeling back the layers of what was to show instead what should be. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t have to. He wanted the broad-shouldered boy from Iowa. He wanted his captain. He wanted his best friend in this whole upside-down world.

He wanted Steve.

The light inside him, long hidden, shone a little brighter, a fireplace put to the match, its flames spurred by the sounds Steve was making, the way his body was moving, the hitch of his hips against the peach curves of Margaret’s ass, against the back of Bucky’s hand, trapped.

“ _Oh_.” A punch of sound, another. “Oh, fuck. Jesus. Fuck.”

Bucky looked up, lifted his face from Margaret’s folds and saw her arm bent back and turned around Steve’s neck, her face pressed against his, the pretty, heavy bounce of her tits.

“That’s it,” she murmured. “You’re so close, aren’t you my darling? Yes, you are. Yes.” She kissed his cheek, lingered. “You’re still thinking about Bucky sucking your cock.”

Steve whimpered. The sound made Bucky’s hips jerk.

“Do you want to know what his mouth feels like? Hmmm?” She clawed gently at one broad arm. “It feels so good, Steve. And so, so bloody wet. He knew just where to put his tongue, where I wanted him to lick.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, he did. And you can feel how wet he made me, can’t you?”

A word like shattered glass. “Yes.”

“And I can feel how hard he’s made you. Just from you watching. He hasn’t even touched you yet, has he?”

“No.”

Margaret’s hand found Bucky’s shoulder, stroked, the circuit reconnecting. “He hasn’t kissed you either, has he?”

All he could see was the line of Steve’s throat, the flash of clawing red roses. “Oh, god. No. No, I--”

“But he wants to.” Her nails traced his jaw. “You do, don’t you, Sergeant?”

“Yes,” Bucky said. He was shaking. He was so turned on it felt almost unreal, like he'd moved outside of his body. “God, Steve. Yes."

Steve made a high, tight noise that echoed from the bricks. His grip on Margaret's body went white.

Margaret’s voice was a soft stone, an order. "Then be a good boy and come for us, darling, and I promise, I promise, he will.”


	6. Chapter 6

Steve buried his face against Margaret’s neck, nestled into her soft chestnut hair, and stilled like a tree in a hurricane’s eye, his arms around Margaret’s body going tight.

“Yes,” she said, with a gentleness Bucky had never heard before, a featherlight sort of caress. “That’s right, Steve. It’s all right. Let all of it out.”

Her eyes fell to Bucky, her hand still on his face, and she smiled, rubbed her fingers over the edge of his lips. “There’s so much of it,” she murmured. “You should feel it, how much he’s coming. He must’ve been holding it in for so long.”

She was wet again. He could smell it, see the soft drip between her folds. Some part of him still wanted to have her, to unzip his pants and pull her into his lap. But the rest of him--the best of him--was transfixed by Steve: by the little sounds he was making, by the way his hands were opening and closing on Margaret’s skin now, petting and squeezing as he floated down, a slowly grounded kite.

So he stood, unsteady, and reached over her shoulder. Lifted Steve’s head and tipped it down towards his own.

“Can I?” he said, surprised by the tremble in his throat, the sudden, strange clutch.

Steve’s hand spread over his back, those blue eyes already closed. “Please,” he whispered. “Bucky, I--”

Their first kiss, then, tasted of Margaret; was scented with the smell of her body, the feel of it pressed between them, an eager rose between two pages pleased, it seemed, to be crushed, and when they parted, tried somehow to breathe, she nudged them back together with her hands and her voice.

“You haven’t have enough, surely.” She kissed Bucky’s neck and bit gently at his ear, reached back to scratch at the base of Steve’s neck. “It’s all right. Go on. Kiss him again.”

This time, Steve dug his fingers into Bucky’s back and gave as good as he got; sucked on Bucky’s tongue and licked sloppy at his lips and gave up a delicious, needy groan. It made Bucky’s knees weak, made something in his chest go cotton candy, made his cock full-on howl in his pants.

“Steve,” he got out, his voice a storm of falling rock. “Steve, _Steve_. Oh, shit.”

Margaret laughed, breathless bells, and twisted in their arms, her dark eyes wide and alight. “Captain, captain,” she said, pulling, shoving. “My god, you two. Come here. Come here.”

It was like a merry-go-around, the whole world turning, and when the ground was solid again, it was Steve on the bench and Bucky parked in his lap and Steve was holding him close like something precious and looking at him like that, too, like Steve had gotten a glimpse of the angels, the Holy Host, trumpets, all that.

“Bucky,” Steve said, a word with a thousand verses. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

Then there was no more hesitation, no more question, because Steve was kissing him, one big hand cupped over the meat of his thigh and the other--the other--

He clawed at Steve’s shoulders and fucked into his fist, frantic, their mouths messy, each kiss a hot, needy crash. His balls were still trapped in his shorts, straining, and Steve didn’t know what the hell he was doing; his grip kept slipping and he wasn’t squeezing hard enough and all that only made him more desperate, made him drip, made him bite Steve’s lip and beg wordless for more.

“How does that feel?” Steve whispered, a whiff of sweet smoke. “Am I doing this right? Jesus, Buck, I’ve wanted to touch you like this forever. For so goddamn fucking long.”

A shout, an orchestra clatter, and there was only white, only joy, a great rush of air and heat and goddamn fucking light like he’d been holding his breath all his life. He looked down through the clouds and saw Steve beaming at him, the prettiest picture, his hand still moving feather duster over Bucky’s twitching dick.

It put foolishness on his tongue, that look, foolishness that was better drowned in Steve’s sweet, satisfied mouth.

“Now that,” Margaret said, somewhere, after seconds wound into minutes, “is something I could damn well watch every day. Not that I’m advocating for that. But you’re quite lovely together, you know.”

She was sitting on the bench an arm’s length away, her skirt on, her blouse fastened, her shoes and her stockings in hand. She was wearing a little smile, wistful, her eyes full of something that in his post-orgasm haze he couldn’t quite read, couldn’t quite figure out.

“You will send me a Christmas card, won’t you?” Her voice was flip, the regular steel in it softened. “When all this madness is done and we’re all back home where we belong.”

Steve shifted beneath him. He looked as uncertain as Bucky suddenly felt. “Well, I don’t think that’ll be for a while yet. Do you?”

“Sadly, no. I think we’re here for, as you might say, the long haul, eh?” Her eyes flicked up and over them, that smile turning up just a tick. “May I say, though, that this was a delightful way to spend an evening in the midst of said haul. I do so wish we could do it again.”

The question slipped out before Bucky could stop it. “Why can’t we?”

She shook her head and rose to her feet, padded across the stone floor and laid her hand on his face, on Steve’s. Let it linger. “Oh, gods,” she said, her voice bruised. “You know why. It’s quite clear that, through no fault of your own, you’ve no need of me, do you?”

She’d kissed Steve again, soft and slow, and as she drew away, Bucky saw her eyes again and understood at last what was curled up there: it was disappointment she was feeling, sadness. A tinge maybe even of grief. He thought of the way she’d kissed Steve that first time, like she’d been waiting a lifetime; the way that she’d writhed when Steve’d first touched her; the way her voice had cracked open Steve’s name as she came.

Oh, god. He felt a shiver of shame, almost sick. He hadn’t known that this would happen, this thing between he and Steve--hadn’t even dreamed. She didn’t think that he’d done this on purpose, did she? That he’d used her to serve some fucking self-centered ends?

But then she turned to him and cupped his chin, her smile wide and undeniably genuine. “But make no mistake about this fact, Sergeant Barnes.”

He reached up and brushed her lovely hair from her face. Let his breath out all in a rush. “What’s that, ma’am?”

Margaret kissed the tip of his nose. “Darling, you owe me one.”


	7. Chapter 7

After, things between he and Margaret felt jangled, like a set of keys that'd twisted its way out of whack.

She was still their CO, of course, the one in charge of their rowdy, ragtag little bunch. He never questioned her judgement, her intuition, her keen ability to read a scene and guide them skillfully through it. But no matter how generous her leavetaking had been, her feelings for Steve hadn't been neatly flipped off like a switch. Bucky saw her looking at him sometimes, her eyes fixed on his face or drifting slow down his body, and in her eyes there was that same wistfulness, the might-have-been, that she’d worn at the end of that long, sweet night.

Margaret adored him. It was plain as fucking day. Maybe it always had been.

But then, he hadn’t taken any score of his own emotional state, had he? Why the hell would have had his stuff together enough to make note of somebody else’s?

“Hell,” Steve had whispered one night, weeks later, when they were tucked into a barn in the Ardennes, “I’ve been in love with you for two damn years and you never had a clue, did you?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

Bucky’s face burned in the darkness. “You know how.”

A nuzzle at his ear, a little hitch against his hips. “Do I?”

Bucky closed his eyes, willed his idiot body to remember that their comrades were a stone’s throw away, tumbled in grateful rows among the sweet-smelling hay. “No guy’s ever had a thing for me before. That’s what I mean.”

“Oh, I find that hard to believe.” Steve chuckled, a warm, sinking sound. “I bet you left a dozen broken hearts behind in Brooklyn, Buck. Probably a few in the Battery, too. Maybe even a few in your Basic. I bet you had them swooning at you behind your back.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing all this time, huh? Swooning behind my back?”

“Yes,” Steve breathed in that impossibly frank way of his, the way that kicked over the chairs in Bucky’s heart and smashed the windows, tore down the drapes. “And in front of it, sometimes. God, I wanted you so bad.”

He’d snatched Steve’s hand from his hip and pressed it against his fly, the stiffening heat that lay beneath. “You did, huh? You don’t anymore?”

Steve moaned, tried to tuck it under the collar of Bucky’s shirt. “Never said that.”

“Yeah?” He turned the word into a dare. “So show me.”

They did that too much in those days, when the thing between them was new, took chances that they’d never dared to back on the shores of real life. Nobody in New York would have been kosher with them kissing, pulling each other behind trees or into dark corners to trade tongues until they were both way too worked up. Nobody in Iowa would’ve been ok with them sitting so close at supper, much less with them sharing a bed roll each night. Fuck, most Army types that Bucky had ever encountered would’ve thrown them out on their ear--but not before beating the shit out of them and calling in a damn priest. He shuddered to think.

But their comrades--a worldly bunch, unmoored and a little jaded--were understanding about it, to a point; everyone, after all, had their own vice. Dugan had his drink and Juniper his lonely French widows and Dernier the big, stinking cigars he liked to steal off of dead Nazis and smoke in the middle of the night. Everybody had to hang on to something good in the world, something worth living for, in their own way.

Still, in those moments when they weren’t laying traps or saving the good guys or running full-out for their lives, it had niggled at Bucky, what would happen after the war, when it was time to return to real life.

“We’ll figure it out,” Steve had said more than once, their shoulders bumping as they trudged down a dirt road or skirted through a low Paris alley. “If and when we get to it, we’ll figure out how to cross that bridge, okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky’d said, reaching quiet for Steve’s hand, squeezing. “Sure we will. Okay.”


	8. Chapter 8

Once Paris was liberated, the tide of the war turned inexorably towards the good, it seemed like time speeded up. Gone were the long if occasionally terrifying nights spent lying in wait; gone was the sound of gunfire that rang out of nowhere, the shouts of somebody there was no way they could save. Now the streets were filled with American GIs and government types anxious to enjoy the city’s fabled freedoms, even as her own people dealt with their own wounds, their pain and trauma and shock.

Their team was saddled with one of them, an industrialist with a livid mustache named Howard Stark. He was New York, too, but not Bucky’s kind; fast-talking with too much money and a little too slick on the sides.

Steve liked him. Steve liked everybody--or made a point of trying to, anyway. The rest of the boys were ok with him, too; after all, he’d brought enough cigs to build a bridge back to Blighty and he had a talent, even in that shell-shocked city, of pulling the prettiest dames--including, much to Bucky’s surprise, the one in charge of their outfit.

Stark was everything that Margaret wasn’t: loud and arrogant and prone to fits of peacocking. Sure, he was smart and all, and damn good at sorting out the opportunists from the true Vichy, but he also drank too much and ogled everything in a skirt and why Margaret would want any piece of that beyond what the job required, Bucky had no earthly idea. And yet there was no question but that they were together, that he wore more of her lipstick than she did, that Stark got to spend every night lavishing worship on Margaret’s heart-stoppingly beautiful tits.

“Is that what this is about?” Steve said over breakfast, powdered milk and powdered eggs and real goddamn bacon. They were sitting in the scrum of a cafe two doors down from their lodgings, a flophouse the US Army had decided to commandeer. “All this mooning you’re doing, not to mention the stink-eye. Seriously, Buck? You’re pissed because you can’t feel her up?”

Bucky had nearly dropped his coffee. “Jesus, Steve!”

“What? That’s what you just said.”

“I’m not mooning,” Bucky hissed, the tips of his ears heating up. “And I’m not giving anybody the stink-eye.”

Steve quirked an eyebrow at him, an angle that just about matched his smile. “You’ve got no poker face, you know that?”

“Oh, yeah? Then how’d I clean out half the squad last night? What was that? Sorcery?”

“No,” Steve said, the sunlight in his eyes, his fingers beneath the table finding Bucky’s knee, a quick brush. “They just don’t know you like I do, that’s all.”

That night, Steve had dragged him out to a bar, one a little ways off the beaten path where having an American to buy drinks for was still a novelty, where their uniforms, beat up as they were, still stood out.

“That girl over there,” Steve said after their second round of watered down brandy.

Bucky turned his head, saw a brunette laughing by the windows with her friends, their faces soft in the candlelight. “Hmmm? What about her?”

“She’s pretty, huh?”

“Since when do you notice?”

Steve bumped his shoulder, teeth sneaking out through a grin. “I can appreciate beauty in all its forms even if I don’t, ah, have a particular predilection for it. But I can be persuaded.”

“Right.”

Steve’s empty glass settled gently on the bar. “And I know what you like.”

There was no music playing so he couldn’t ask her to dance, could only shuffle over and turn up the charm. It wasn’t hard. Like riding a bike.

Her name was Suzette and she’d lost a lot of people: her husband, an uncle. Didn’t want to talk about a single damn one.

“I should be paying for you to drink, yes?” she said in charmingly good English, leaning her elbows on the bar, turning her smile between them. “I think it is the way of things now.”

“Nonsense,” Bucky said in French, keenly aware of Steve’s eyes on his face, his hand just kissing the girl’s lower back. “It’s always the way for us to take care of you.”

“Is this so. Hmm.” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass, its stem chipped, the bowl’s curve pressed against her lips. “American hospitality, is this it?”

She took them back to her place, a tiny flop wedged above a flower shop.

“They loved flowers,” she said, her key turning reluctant in the lock. “So much love for death, them, but they wanted their rooms to smell like fresh roses.”

Her bedroom was warm, locked into the last of the day’s heat, and her body, when they plucked her from her dress, smelled of lilacs. 

“Hold her,” Bucky said, tearing at his coat, peeling off his undershirt, watching Steve’s big, careful hands slip into shadowed lace, watching her face open and sigh. “Lie back and hold on to her, huh?”

By the time he made the bed, she was naked except for the thin line of her panties. Steve had lost his coat and his shoes and she was sitting between his legs, her back pressed into his chest, and when Steve draped his hand over her underwear, stroked, the look he gave Bucky stopped him dead in his tracks.

“She’s so soft,” Steve said, his voice not much more than a whisper. “Like silk here. And she’s already hot.”

“Of course she is.” The words were all rust. “The way you kissed her on the way over here, the way I did. She’s probably halfway to wet.”

Steve shuddered and Suzette did, too, her slim hands rushing up her small, perfect tits to pinch at the blooms of her nipples. Bucky swallowed. Went to open his belt. Said:

“My friend here, he’s never touched a girl’s pussy before. Have you, Stevie?”

A low noise in the dark. “No.”

Suzette’s hips rose and she groaned, a sound that sank into Bucky’s bones. “Never?”

“No. Never.” Bucky leaned down and kissed the inside of her knee. “Would you like him to touch yours?”

She leaned back against Steve’s chest and snatched at his hand, grabbed his wrist and rubbed herself against his palm, a gorgeous, hungry arch. “Yes,” she said in English, in French, in a language that went far beyond words. “Steve, do this for me. Please.”

Steve slid his fingers into her panties, his wrist stretching the thin fabric wide, and Bucky could see it, the moment Steve found her clit, her eyes and his going wide. 

“Tell me,” Steve said, his voice like red wine. “Will you do that for me, sweetheart? Tell me when I do something you like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm along for the ride as much as you are here, folks.


	9. Chapter 9

She came on Steve’s fingers while Bucky watched, his hands balled into fists, his knees digging into the old quilt that covered the bed, and every time he got brave enough to look up, Steve’s eyes were hung up on him like long-limbed, spiky stars.

They’d never really talked about it, what had happened with Margaret. Which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Oh, they’d teased each other about it some--Steve had sure learned to mimic Bucky’s brashness, his presumption, and Bucky’d made more than his fair of cracks about his captain coming in his pants--but they hadn’t hashed it out in any detail, hadn’t done any kind of reflecting. But then, like Margaret had said, they had each other, didn’t they? So what need was there to fucking dwell? For months, going on years now, there hadn't been.

But now, with a woman between them again, all that bare skin and a soft, sullen clench, Bucky felt a knot in his throat, a flip in his stomach that gnawed at him, made him think things he couldn’t quite name.

Steve didn’t get off on women like he did. He knew that. It just wasn't Steve's way. But there was no denying how lit up Steve was now, his skin sticky in the moonlight, his breath harsh in a way that Bucky had come to know so goddamn well. And there was no question, none at fucking all, that watching Steve touch this girl, tease her sweet little folds under her panties, was driving Bucky out of his mind.

Suzette didn’t demand like Margaret had. She didn’t order them about or laugh or make the whole thing seem like the best kind of dare. Her mouth hung open, sure, but no words came out, English or otherwise, just a long, aching string of sounds, and when she came, her thighs squeezing, Steve’s steady hand stroking her through it, she didn’t call them by name or rake her fingers through their hair or demand more, like Margaret would have, a command they couldn't ignore.

Margaret. Why the hell was he thinking about Margaret? He reached mindless for his belt, for the needy swell of his fly. She was probably stretched out under that Stark guy right now as wet as this girl was, wetter, her pretty pussy getting fucked open wide.

He grabbed the base of his dick as a sudden flood of heat beckoned, threatened. He swallowed. Bit back the sensation of falling.

But she’d never lie back for a guy like that, one that was all hot air and bluster. No, Margaret was on top right now, her breasts bouncing, her hands dug into Stark’s chest as she took wha she wanted from him. He’d put his last dollar on it.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice, quiet, searching. “Hey. You all right?”

The words raced out before he could stop them. “I’d like to fuck her.” And then again, in French, over Steve’s sharp intake of breath: “How about it? May I fuck you, my dear?”

Her big, green eyes opened, smiled. “I thought you would never ask.”

He’d wanted to taste her, had been looking forward to it all evening. He’d wanted to lick at her tits, small and perfect, and see if he could make her come just from that. But now, his head felt like a fever--Steve staring at him and Margaret in his head and Suzette laid out beneath him, warm and willing--and it was all he could do to get the rubber on and her panties off and shove his way in.

It was only after she’d taken all of him, her strong, calloused hands moving over his back, that he remembered that she was sandwiched between them, that Steve was holding onto her, that every jerk of his hips, Steve could feel it; that the harder he fucked, the faster, Suzette wasn’t the only one who could feel the impact.

“You did so good,” Bucky whispered, tipping his face to brush Steve’s. “The way you touched her, sweetheart. Jesus, you should feel it. You got her so fucking wet.”

Steve moaned. Bucky could feel the hot bounce of Suzette’s breath.

“Yeah?” Steve said. “Does she feel good?”

“So good. So good. She’s tight.” Bucky kissed the tangled crown of her hair. “She’s gonna come again, aren’t you, darlin'?”

Suzette fluttered around him, her teeth closing soft at his throat. “Yes,” she moaned, the sound like hot silk. “Oh, god. Oh, shit, _yes_.”

“You can fuck her too.” He didn’t think about the words; they just came out. “When I’m finished, Steve, you can roll one on and she'd let you, I know she would--”

Steve stroked the back of his neck, fingers slipping through sweat. “No,” he murmured, “oh, no. When you’re finished, Sergeant, I want your hands on my cock.”

That was what drop kicked him over, what ripped away the last of his sanity and made him give up a few last, aching thrusts: the echo of Margaret in that room, in the small space between them, and for a moment, a flash behind his eyes, he could feel her beneath him, gasping, the jolt of her nipples dragging hot against his chest, the way she’d be writhing at the promise of Steve’s cock, too, the way that she’d demand it, fuck, the way that she’d want Bucky to watch.

He shouted, his mouth wrapped around a name that wasn’t Suzette’s, and the sound slipped out of the window, broke like a storm over the quiet of the night. A storm with two voices, her and his, and a low chorus of Steve underneath.

“Yes,” Steve said in his ear. Inexplicably gentle. “I know, Buck. I know. It’s all right.”


	10. Chapter 10

They didn’t talk about it on the way back, or in their bed, after, the two of them strung together in the last hours before dawn. But in the morning, his hands, Steve’s throat, the tips of his fingers still carried a trace of lilacs.

“She’s leaving soon, you know,” Steve said later, while they were strolling down the  Champs-Élysées.

“Who is?”

“Margaret. She’s been called back to London.”

“Oh.”

“And Howard’s going with her. He's got some kind of contract with the Brits. That’s what I hear.”

Bucky looked up at him, Steve’s golden hair awash in sunlight. There was color in his cheeks, an ease in his stride that Bucky had watched slowly develop. This wasn’t the same shy Adonis he’d come over with all those months ago, the Captain who looked like a kid; no, Steve carried himself like a man now, an officer, a soldier with a well-earned element of pride. 

“Well, that’s her business, isn’t it?” The words came out more brittle than he’d meant. “Or her government’s, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “But it’s the end of something, too.” He shot Bucky a sad smile. “I mean, the war’s not even over yet and it feels like the gang’s breaking up.”

Bucky poked him in the side, ignored the stupid catch in his throat. “You’re a sap, Rogers, you know that? Nobody said this outfit was permanent. And Hitler’s finished. He’s just too damn stupid to see that yet.”

“We’ve been through a lot together,” Steve said, “that’s all.” His hand found Bucky’s elbow, lingered. “There’s something to be said for that, don’t you think?”

At dinner, it seemed like Steve wasn’t the only one feeling sentimental, the only one who’d caught wind of Margaret’s upcoming departure. The whole gang was there, every single Howling Commando, sitting at the same table like they hadn’t in weeks. 

Of course, it wasn’t quite the same as those clandestine suppers they’d held over campfires, or the time--as Dugan gleefully reminded them--when a farmer’s wife had been so happy to see them she’d set out a hell of a spread. They were safe, for one thing; nobody listened for mortars or the crack of a sniper. And they had a roof over their heads, too, one that hid them from the worst of the evening’s cold rain. And Stark was there, that genial interloper, passing the brandy and yukking it up like he’d been there for all of it, as if he were one of them. He sat next to Margaret, of course, never more than a hand’s width from her side. He filled her glass and smiled into her eyes and for some god awful reason called her “Peg,” a name that, so far as Bucky could see, didn’t suit her a damn bit at all.

But she didn’t seem to mind it, did she? No, he thought, watching her smile, watching her lean over and kiss the word from Stark’s lips. Not one lick.

The candles were burning low when Steve leaned over, his hand hot on Bucky’s knee. “You’re staring,” he said in Bucky’s ear.

His face flamed. He jerked his eyes away, guilty. “Am not.”

Steve’s fingers crept up. His thumb caught the inside of Bucky’s thigh. “Let’s go to bed.”

“No,” Bucky said, fumbling for his wine. “I’m fine.”

“You haven’t taken your eyes off her all night.”

“Steve, I’m--”

Steve sighed, said again, patient: “Let’s go to bed. And you can tell me all about why.”

Bucky swallowed. It was bitter at the back of his throat. “Why what?”

A soft squeeze. “Why you’ve gotten so hard just from looking.”

Upstairs, Steve stripped him and planted him on the bed, one big, hot hand pressed to the center of his chest. There was no place left to hide now.

“I thought last night would help,” Steve said. “But it didn’t, did it? It’s only made everything worse.”

“Help with what?”

“Buck.” The word soft, a feather. “You know what.”

Bucky’s cock jerked. Fuck, he was already leaking. “No, I don’t,” he said, stubborn. “Got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Steve looked at him, his eyes gentle, his face carved by the candlelight. “You want Margaret.”

“I want  _ you _ .” 

“Both can be true.”

Jesus, the way that he said it, so simple, so goddamn matter of fact. Bucky couldn’t quite hide his gasp.

“Steve, it doesn’t work like that.”

“Says who?” Steve’s fingers flexed, his smile pinning Bucky in place. “Why can’t it?”

Bucky laughed; he had to. It was either that or throw his head back and scream. “Kid, I know you’re new to this romantical stuff, but your head’s gotten something way out of whack.”

“I might be new to it, yeah, but maybe that’s an advantage.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because,” Steve said, “I’m not so wedded to the fucking rules.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You want us both. Me and Margaret. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Bucky squirmed, a shot of shame in his belly that only served to stiffen his cock. “Pretty sure there is.”

“When we were with that girl last night, Suzette, did that feel wrong?” Steve dipped his head, kissed the tip of Bucky’s nipple. “When you were watching me finger her. When you were fucking her pussy at the same time you were kissing me, did you feel like you were doing something wrong?”

He groaned, reached for the curve of Steve’s head. “No. God no.”

“Then why is Margaret any different? Why would having her here in our bed be any more wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

Steve bit him, a sharp, electric shock. “Yes, you do. You care about her, don’t you?”

Bucky couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t let himself say it. “Fuck, Steve, I--”

“You do.” The words were a whisper. They might as well have been thunder. “Every since Stark showed up, you’ve been green to the gills, you know that? You should see your face when he’s around, Buck. Like tonight at supper. You can barely stand to look the guy in the eye. You’re jealous as hell, aren’t you?”

A flash of Stark’s suave, smirking face. His hand resting at the small of Margaret’s back. “ _ No _ .”

“It’s not just that you want to fuck her, or that you miss having a woman.” Steve kissed his throat, petal soft. “You care about her.”

He closed his eyes and smoothed a hand over Steve’s shoulder, his skin catching on cotton. Stopped trying to bite back the words. “It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t fucking matter now, does it? She’s with Stark. And I love you.”

Steve hummed, the vibrations soothing. “I know. I never doubt that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t care about her.”

“She doesn’t want me, Stevie. If there was anybody she wanted that night, it was you."

“Oh, really? How the hell do you know that?” Steve raised his head, his expression all challenge. “Have you asked her?”

“She’s the one who walked away from us.” God, he sounded so angry. Was he? Had he been all these weeks? “Picked up her things and fucked right off. You remember that, right?”

“I remember. But see, that proves my point. About the advantage of being a rookie in this, I mean.”

“How so?”

Steve brushed Bucky’s hair from his forehead. “You’re both trapped by the rules, aren’t you? About this bullshit notion that everybody’s only got enough love for one. Which I know--which I’ve seen with my own eyes, thanks to you--is not at all true.”

“Going to bed with two people isn’t the same as loving two people, Steve.”

“I know. But you felt it, right? The difference between Margaret and what happened last night.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. But that doesn’t--I mean, that’s not exactly proof.”

Steve’s fingers found his chin and tipped it up, eased their mouths together, sure and swift. “‘Course it’s not. But it’s a place to start, don’t you think?”

Bucky grinned, felt a weird swoop of hope. “You sound like you have a plan, Rogers.”

“I mean, maybe. We’ll see.” Steve kissed him again, harder now, his breath coming faster. “It seems to me the least we could do is ask.”


End file.
